1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910822953203321

Autore

Huang Kerson <1928->

Titolo

Fundamental forces of nature : the story of gauge fields / / Kerson Huang

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Singapore ; ; Hackensack, NJ, : World Scientific, c2007

ISBN

1-281-12177-0

9786611121778

981-277-071-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (285 p.)

Disciplina

530.1435

Soggetti

Gauge fields (Physics)

Equations of motion

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Nota di contenuto

Contents; Preface; Introduction; 1. What Makes the World Tick?; 2. Electromagnetism; 3. The Vacuum is the Medium; 4. Let There be Light; 5. Heroic Age: The Struggle for Quantum Theory; 6. Quantum Reality; 7. What is Charge?; 8. The Zen of Rotation; 9. Yang-Mills Field: Non-Commuting Charges; 10. Photons Real and Virtual; 11. Creation and Annihilation; 12. The Dynamical Vacuum; 13. Elementary Particles; 14. The Fall of Parity; 15. The Particle Explosion; 16. Quarks; 17. All Interactions are Local; 18. Broken Symmetry; 19. Quark Confinement; 20. Hanging Threads of Silk

21. The World in a Grain of Sand22. In the Space of All Possible Theories; Epilogue: Beauty is Truth; Appendix. Nobel Prize in Physics; Name Index; Subject Index

Sommario/riassunto

Gauge fields are the messengers carrying signals between elementary particles, enabling them to interact with each other. Originating at the level of quarks, these basic interactions percolate upwards, through nuclear and atomic physics, through chemical and solid state physics, to make our everyday world go round. This book tells the story of gauge fields, from Maxwell's 1860 theory of electromagnetism to the 1954 theory of Yang and Mills that underlies the Standard Model of elementary particle theory. In the course of the narration, the author



introduces people and events in experimental and